Sugar & Spice (14 page)

Now that you know what I was doing and why, please be decent enough to keep what happened to me from my parents. They are great people with high moral standards. The idea of knowing that their only son had died in such a manner would haunt them for the rest of their natural lives. They would be blamed for my experimentation and it had nothing to do with them. My own sexual deviance led me to an early grave.

It was signed Dwight Rappaport.

“Kelly,” I said when I heard her come back into the room. “What'll you bet this guy is from California?”

“Probably,” Kelly said.

I looked at Rappaport. He was bald. I frowned when I noticed that he didn't have any facial hair at all. No eyebrows. No eyelashes. He hadn't shaved his genitals; the hair had fallen out, I realized. Rappaport may
have had alopecia universalis, a skin disease responsible for the loss of all bodily hair. Some people are born with it.

Rappaport had to be the killer. Or at least one of them, I thought. All the evidence pointed to him, yet, in my bones, in my heart, I knew it was just too neat. We were lucky to find out that the whips had come from the land down under and that bit of information led us to Rappaport, who conveniently blew his brains out right in front of us.

I think I would have felt better if we had found him dead. That way, I could at least think someone killed him to shut him up. But being a witness to self-annihilation blows away that theory.
Damn!
Why did we have to hear that music and go in search of a way in? If we had maybe come a few minutes later, he would have been finished and we could have at least questioned him. We could have learned or confirmed a few things.

We searched Rappaport's house, hoping to find something, anything that would link him to the murders. Sure, we had the videotape he was watching, but any first-year Georgetown law student could get that thrown out if that's all we had. A lawyer might argue that his taste in videos doesn't prove he murdered anyone, which is true.

Unless we found the whips and forensics could prove that the whips were the same ones used in Malibu and D.C, we were at a dead end again. Dwight Rappaport was innocent until we proved he did the murders. And the only way we were going to do that was by finding the other killer. As far as I was concerned, one of the vicious killers was off the streets. Unfortunately, the other man was still at large, and we had to wait until he killed again so that we could collect more clues.

“Phoenix, look at this,” Kelly said from inside the closet.

I walked over and looked in. There was a replica of Rappaport's penis hanging on a coat hook.
The Plow
was stenciled on it. “I've heard of porn stars having their organs molded for a fee and a percentage,” I said.

Apparently Dwight Rappaport had made his fortune from the royalties he earned by allowing an artificial penis manufacturer to mold his abnormally large organ.

According to Rappaport's ledgers, he was marketing sex toys. Evidently there is a huge market for edible lingerie, handcuffs, whips, paddles,
blindfolds, butt plugs, lubricants, vibrators, flavored condoms, et cetera. We had found invoices and a ledger full of filled orders. No names and addresses, just stock numbers, dates, and prices. From our search, we knew that he didn't keep his merchandise in his home, which meant he probably hired a shipping and receiving company to handle the orders while he raked in the cash.

I flipped open my cell and called Season Chambers. She had offered to help us in any way she could. Season had told me she wanted to get the killer of innocent women off the streets. I thought that if I offered her the exclusive, she would honor Rappaport's wishes. I think the man was a creep, but he had a point. The media would be all over this if his cause of death was reported. I personally don't care for nor do I trust the media. But Season was woman enough to apologize to my face and offer her services. Giving Season the chance to read the note and actually get a look at the crime scene could be the beginning of building a good relationship with her.

Inside of an hour, Rappaport's home was crawling with FBI agents. They were going through everything, even the trash. As I spoke with Season Chambers, I could hear the constant chatter of the forensics team. They talked about dinner and joked about the firm grip Rappaport had on his tool, the drying semen on the television screen, and gray matter on the wall.

“You ever see a stiff with a GSW to the head?” I asked her. Season frowned. She really was green. “A gunshot wound,” I explained.

“No,” she said, her eyes filled with fright.

I said, “Prepare yourself. I couldn't tell you on the cell, but the man is naked and he was masturbating with a gun to his head. The gun went off. Now you have your first exclusive. Don't make it your last. Keep what I show you in confidence, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Season Chambers wasn't in the room five seconds before she doubled over, put both hands over her mouth, and ran.

The coroner found traces of cocaine in Taylor Hoffman's system. It was looking more and more like a drug connection at Norrell Prison. I wondered if Jack Hoffman was somehow running drugs out to California on his many jaunts to the West Coast. He was back in town and Kelly and I were on our way to talk to him. The good news, if you could call it that, was the coroner thought two men had killed both Sarah Lawford and Taylor Hoffman. If Dwight Rappaport was one of the men, we still had one on the loose.

Kortney Malone, our illustrious acting director, against my wishes, decided to have a press conference. She announced that we had tracked one of the killers “who had committed suicide while performing a sexual act on himself,” was how she put it. I had told her not to do it, but Kortney thought it would help smoke out the other killer. She went on to say how sexually depraved these men were and how we were closing in. We weren't even close to closing in, I'd told her. If the other man decided to stop the killings on his own, he'd get away scot-free.

“You see why I don't like Kortney, Phoenix?” Kelly said.

I laughed. “Yeah. But let's give her a chance. We women have to stick together.”

“Sticking together may ultimately lead to our own demise.” Kelly laughed. “But I'll give her a chance.”

I parked the Mustang in front of the Hoffman house and we got out of
the car. “Phoenix, this could be a big waste of time. You know that, don't you?”

“Yeah, I know. But we gotta follow every lead. You know that, right?”

“Yep,” she said in a ho-hum way.

I rang the doorbell. “Jack Hoffman?” I said when a man opened the door.

“Yes,” he said.

“I'm Special Agent Perry, and this is Agent McPherson. I know this is a bad time, sir. But we need to ask you a few questions.”

Jack Hoffman confirmed our suspicions. He and Taylor did use cocaine that night but they were not involved in trafficking. He told us that they had celebrated that night by going out for an expensive dinner. When they returned, they both did a couple of lines and made love. They showered and Taylor took him to Dulles. We believed him, which meant we had come to another dead end.

“You ready to call it a night, Phoenix?”

“Yes, but we're not going to,” I said. “We're going back to the lab and opening Rappaport's hard drive. We might find something there. I know it's been a long disappointing day, but I want to see what's there.”

We hadn't found anything connecting Dwight Rappaport to drugs or to the killings. All we had was his address and the fact that his postal box received three bullwhips. There was something to that. I knew it.

I opened the hard drive and did some snooping. It occurred to me that Si Davey had been contacted via the Internet. Since Dwight Rappaport had ordered the whips online, and given his penchant for sexual bondage, there was a chance that the other man may be into the same things. If so, perhaps they kept in contact through email. That's what I was really looking for. Someone he may have met in a chat room.

Lucky for us, Rappaport had kept a lot of his email. However, there was so much of it, it was going to take some time to track down all of the names and addresses. We started by disregarding all mail that came in
after the Perkins murders. If Rappaport were one of the men we were looking for, he would have had the partner earlier. We concentrated on the previous email.

There were letters about the products he sold, but most were asking about bondage, offering to play sex games with him. I was thinking, there are some really sick people out there—lots of them. It occurred to me that most of the people were writing one letter so we eliminated them for the time being and concentrated on those he corresponded with at least three times. I wanted to know who these degenerates were and where they lived.

We had narrowed the search down to about two hundred screen names. It was time to call it a night. We were going to let the computer techs do their thing. By morning, we would have another lead. Problem was the other killer may not have been among the list of names we'd given the techs. And even if he was, he may not live in the D.C. area. But it was all we had, so we had to roll with it.

Season Chambers had just finished broadcasting the eleven o'clock news and was on her way home. It had been a long day. Seeing Dwight Rappaport sitting in his den with his hand locked onto his privates and his brains splattered against the wall had been a vivid memory that had resurfaced all day. She was glad to be going home, but she wished she didn't have to be home alone. Season Chambers was a driven twenty-four-year-old woman who had made up her mind to become an anchorwoman at a network.

The fact that Phoenix Perry had selected her for the exclusive story on the chain saw murders was evidence that she was well on her way. After all, Phoenix was an FBI agent. Season believed that this was just the beginning. The bureau would eventually catch the other maniac and another would rear his ugly head. Then another and another. And with any luck, if she kept her word to Phoenix, she would become a liaison of sorts with a pipeline inside the bureau. If only I had met Phoenix when the assassin was in town a couple of months ago, she thought.

Season Chambers felt her stomach growl. She hadn't eaten all day. Who could blame her after seeing Dwight Rappaport's brains all over the wall and his scions on the television screen. She shook her head slowly as she relived what she had seen for the hundredth time that day. She pulled into Wendy's and ordered a grilled chicken salad with a Diet Coke.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled into her garage and went into the house. She hung her keys on the rack just inside the house. “I'm so glad to be home,” she said aloud.

“We're glad you're home, too, Season,” Terry said. “After all, it is your turn.”

The waiting game was difficult for me. I had hoped to get something from the techs early in the day, but so far, I hadn't heard a thing. We were close to breaking the case wide open. Coco Nimburu had once told me that the clues were right in front of me. I was missing something. But what? I knew it was something we were taking for granted. It could be the smallest, most insignificant thing. It was probably something that we wouldn't even consider. Later, Kelly and I would go back over everything we had. Together, maybe we could figure it out.

I had taken Savannah to the library earlier and I had the strangest feeling we were being watched. I found myself turning around several times to see who it was that found my daughter and me so interesting. I had assumed it was a man checking me out, but I never saw anyone looking in our direction. But the feeling persisted until we left.

On the way home, we stopped by Blockbuster Video and picked up a copy of
The Hurricane
for me and Keyth. Savannah wanted to see
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and put a loaf of buttered garlic bread in the oven. It was good to have a normal day in my fast-paced life.

After we finished eating, Savannah went into our room and watched her movie while Keyth and I watched
The Hurricane
in the family room. We were halfway into the picture when the phone rang.

“Hello,” I said.

“We got an address, Agent Perry,” the tech said.

“What took so long?” I asked.

“One of the techs found it at about three a.m.,” the teeh said. “He told me to tell you at a decent hour this morning, but I forgot.”

I was pissed, but I didn't let on. I wanted to say that another woman might be dead because you forgot. Instead, I said, “What's the address?”

“It's one of the prisoners at Norrell. They were using a library computer.”

A broad smile flashed across my face. This was it. The break we were waiting for. Then I frowned. I said, “How can a prisoner be involved? He may have access to the Internet, but that's as far as it goes.”

“I don't know, Agent Perry. But I do apologize for not passing this vital information on earlier.”

“No problem,” I said and hung up the phone. I picked up the remote and paused the film. “Keyth, does it make sense to you that a prisoner at Norrell is committing the crimes?”

“Yes. Given what's been going on out there. Hell yeah! They probably let the prisoners out at night. Who knows?”

“Maybe it wasn't a prisoner at all. Salaam Khan may have been right all along. It may have been Captain Callahan. He would have just as much access to the computers as prisoners. More, in fact. Trouble is, he's already up on charges. Why would he do this? I can perhaps understand the warden. Money may have been the issue there. But what about the rest? Could Callahan have flown out to Malibu to do the Connelly mansion murders, then flown back?”

“Good questions. Every one of them. You and Kelly better get back out to the prison and ask some questions. And be ready for anything. If you're right, if it is Callahan, you'd better take an army of agents with you. They've got an arsenal at that prison.”